Earlier this year, we introduced a change to the way Organizer labels emails in Gmail accounts. Instead of using a single “OtherInbox” label, Gmail Organizer now uses new OIB labels that help categorize emails as they are organized.

Based on the feedback we received, the majority of our users liked these new labels. However, some missed the ability to select a single label or folder in Gmail to view all organized emails at once.

We listened and have added a new “OIB” label for all organized emails. Because Gmail allows multiple labels, every organized email now has its category label and the OIB label. The benefit is you can now see your organized emails by category or all at once.

Nested labels

When you combine this “OIB” label with Gmail’s Nested Labels (a Gmail lab), the result is nested labels right inside of Gmail that can be collapsed and expanded. This is a great way to keep your labels nice and neat. We recommend that you give it a try. Just follow these instructions to turn it on:

• In Gmail, go to Settings, then Labs (or click the green flask icon next to Settings)
• Find the lab Nested Labels and click Enable
• Scroll to the top or bottom of the list and click Save Changes

Last year when we developed Automatic Organizer, our Yahoo! Mail application, we used Browser-Based Authentication (BBAuth) to connect OtherInbox to Yahoo! Mail accounts. BBAuth allowed Yahoo! Mail users to authorize OtherInbox to connect to their email accounts without needing to give up their Yahoo! passwords.

This was great! It allowed us to connect to Yahoo! Mail accounts and still provide our users the safety and protection of never giving out their Yahoo! passwords. In addition, our users could disconnect from OtherInbox from their Yahoo! Mail settings if they desired.

However, using BBAuth to access Yahoo! Mail accounts proved to have a couple limitations:

• If the user changed his or her Yahoo! password, the OtherInbox connection was broken.
• We had to create an OtherInbox account for each user. This meant each user had another username and password to keep track of.

Two things happened after our application was created that allowed us to improve the user experience immensely. Last September, Yahoo! announced support for the OpenID OAuth Hybrid Protocol. This powerful protocol allows Yahoo! users to sign in to external sites and allow for two-way data sharing all in one step. This potentially meant our users would no longer need an OtherInbox login.

Second, earlier this year Yahoo! introduced an OAuth API for Yahoo! Mail for all Yahoo! Mail accounts. Now, we could take advantage of the Hybrid Protocol to offer our Yahoo! Mail Organizer users a greatly enhanced experience.

The advantages?

• A user changing his or her Yahoo! password no longer breaks the OtherInbox connection
• Users can sign in to OtherInbox with their Yahoo! username and password

For our users, this meant no longer needing to remember another username and password. Because of the Hybrid Protocol, the signup process (and setting up OAuth and OpenID) is completed in just one step.

We also experienced some positive changes. When we used BBAuth, we received many inquiries from our users about how to access their OtherInbox account. We had to create an OtherInbox account for every new user with a unique username and password.

Despite our best efforts, many users would still be confused. Some would try their Yahoo! credentials to sign in to OtherInbox and subsequently get locked out. We would receive 100-200 inquiries like this every month.

After taking advantage of the Hybrid Protocol, these inquiries have dropped to effectively zero. We have also seen some evidence that our deactivation rate has dropped, especially amongst new users who have had Organizer installed for less than 30 days.

Overall, we believe switching to OAuth and OpenID allows us to provide our users a far superior experience and provides us with a product that will have higher conversion and retention rates.

Previously on this blog, Joshua Baer asked our Gmail Organizer users for their feedback. Organized messages are currently labeled with just one OtherInbox label. Josh suggested an alternative: multiple OIB labels like those in our Yahoo! Mail Organizer product. We wanted to know which you thought was better.

Based on your feedback from the blog, on our support site, and via emails from our users, the answer was clear. We will be introducing multiple OIB labels for Gmail Organizer on Monday, May 17. We think our Gmail Organizer users will enjoy having their messages categorized with these new labels as much as our Yahoo! Mail Organizer users do.

Too many labels? You can hide them!

With the new OIB labels, the list of labels in Gmail may become a bit lengthy. You can control this by going to Settings, then Labels, to choose which labels you want to see when Gmail loads. Clicking hide next to any label will hide it from the default view. This is a great way to highlight your most important labels so they stand out when you open Gmail.

Nested labels

You may have noticed a different naming scheme for OIB labels. Instead of OIB Shopping, like one of the folders in Yahoo! Mail Organizer, the Gmail version has a slash — OIB/Shopping. Why did we do this? So OIB labels will nest over IMAP.

If you read your Gmail messages over IMAP, OIB labels will group together under a parent folder named OIB. Depending on your email client, you may be able to collapse and expand this folder. This helps keep the folder list in your client organized and tidy.

Don't use IMAP? There is a Gmail Labs feature to show nested folders in the web version of Gmail as well! Just follow these instructions to turn it on:

• In Gmail, go to Settings, then Labs (or click the green flask icon next to Settings)
• Find the lab Nested Labels and click Enable
• Scroll to the top or bottom of the list and click Save Changes
• Go to Settings, then Labels
• Find the blank for creating a new label and create one called OIB

The result is nested labels that can be collapsed and expanded right inside of Gmail!

We really hope our Gmail Organizer users love using these new labels as much as our Yahoo! Mail Organizer users do. Combining OIB labels with some of the advanced features in Gmail make for a great way to keep your Inbox organized, automatically! To connect OtherInbox to your Gmail account, sign up with your Gmail account today!

Since we launched Organizer for Yahoo! Mail a year ago, the application has undergone several makeovers. It got the job done, but as with most applications in their first generation, it was definitely in need of some polish.

Below is what Organizer for Yahoo! Mail looked like when we launched the application just one year ago. Senders were listed in alphabetical order and not by folder. The sender's name could not be changed. Even the folders a sender was organized into could not be changed.

We've come a long way from these humble beginnings. There have been at least three complete redesigns of the application in the past year.

Our most recent redesign gives Organizer a fresh new look. As a Yahoo! Mail application, we wanted to reinforce how Organizer works with Yahoo! Mail. For example, you may notice the folder icons and the font for the folder names match how Yahoo! Mail presents folders. 

New features we've introduced in the past twelve months have also influenced the design. Grouping senders by folder allow you to drag-and-drop a sender from one folder to another. Since the most common action a user is likely to take is turning off the organizing of a sender, we've made this Folders page the first thing you see when you open the application.

What do you think of the current design? How can we make it better and easier to use?

It's even easier to invite your friends!

We love that so many of our users want to share Organizer with their friends and family. To make this even easier, we've added a new Invitations page right inside the application. Just click the Invitations tab to get started.

Click "Suggest people" and we will make some suggestions based on your sent messages. Or, just enter in the email addresses of your friends and family in the designated spaces. Review the message and click "Send invitations" and we will send your message with a link directly to the signup page. You can even track the status of your invitations in the column on the right. 

Yesterday, Gmail announced a new notification when it detects suspicious login activity for a Gmail account. For example, if a Gmail account was accessed in Austin, TX and then only a few minutes later in Europe, that might trigger this notification to let you know something suspicious may be occurring.

Unfortunately, this can result in some false alarms for OtherInbox users who connect OIB to their Gmail accounts. To find the account activity log in Gmail, find the Details link at the very bottom of the page.

Organizer for Gmail automatically scans and organizes incoming messages into a Gmail account's Inbox, looking for messages that aren't from real people (like newsletters, coupons, receipts, alerts, and so on). These scans connect to this Gmail account periodically throughout the day.

Because our services are hosted entirely in the cloud (specifically, Amazon Web Services), our connections to Gmail accounts come from multiple servers across the United States. These connections will appear in the activity log as IMAP connections.

Below, this Gmail account is normally accessed in Texas, but an IMAP connection was made from New York. This IMAP connection is actually OtherInbox, doing a scan to look for any messages that need to be organized.

If you wish to disable these warnings, you can do so using the "change" link underneath the log. Going forward, we are investigating solutions to minimize and eliminate these warnings for our Organizer users.

Last week, several of our users contacted us complaining about spam in their OtherInbox. Initially, one common complaint was spam being sent to their Seesmic mailbox. It turns out it wasn’t Seesmic’s fault, it was a service provider they were using who got hacked. But, that doesn’t matter to the millions of consumers whose email address is probably in the hands of spammers now.

How did our users know who was spamming them? They provide every site that sends them email with a unique OIB address, like seesmic@yourname.oib.com.

When you use OIB addresses, it’s easy to see who is responsible for the spam you get. And, it’s easy to stop the spam you don’t want. If you gave everyone the same email address, you would have no idea how your email address was obtained by spammers.

We continued to receive more reports of spam. Ultimately, we discovered something else in common – the OIB addresses were given to sites that use an email service provider named AWeber. As it turns out, AWeber’s database got hacked, and their subscribers’ email addresses were accessed.

AWeber’s website claims they manage email marketing for over 65,000 clients. If you signed up for a newsletter from any one of those 65,000+ clients, you could have been spammed.

This is not a dig at AWeber at all. They are a reputable company, with a very strong anti-spam policy, and are known for having good practices. Unfortunately, they got hacked and many email addresses were mined. Even if AWeber fixes all their security issues, their subscribers’ email addresses are already in the hands of spammers. There is no way to take it back, so those subscribers are screwed. I’m sure a lot of them wish they had an OIB account now!

But OtherInbox users are safe. They can just Block the seesmic@yourname.oib.com email address with a single click and change their address with Seesmic to something different, like seesmic1@yourname.oib.com. No more spam!

In the end, bad things can happen to anyone, even the good guys! Protect yourself from spam. Get an OtherInbox account and start using OIB addresses. Leave your Inbox for real people and be fearless with your email!

Since the introduction of Automatic Organizer for Yahoo! Mail earlier this year, many enhancements have been made to make saving your Inbox for real people even easier. We have been working hard improving Automatic Organizer to reflect the feedback from our users. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight a few new features now available to make your experience even more enjoyable.

File messages from new senders

Automatic Organizer is already set up to file messages from hundreds of different stores, social networks, and websites automatically without changing a single setting. However, if there’s a message from another sender that Organizer doesn’t pick up, it’s easy to change this. Simply drag-and-drop the message into the appropriate OIB folder.

Create your own OIB folders

In order to create your own folders for Automatic Organizer to use, simply add a new Yahoo! Mail folder and name it anything you like with the letters “OIB” in front of it, such as OIB Family, OIB Work, or OIB Restaurants. Then, drag-and-drop a message into this new OIB folder, and Automatic Organizer will file messages the same way from this sender in the future.

Change where your messages are filed

Within Yahoo! Mail, simply drag-and-drop a message from that sender from its current OIB folder to a new one. Or, you can open Automatic Organizer and choose a new folder or category next to the sender name.

Edit sender names

When a custom sender is created, sometimes the name of the sender is a
bit long or awkward. Open Automatic Organizer, click the sender name, type in a new name, and click OK.

Need help?

• Post a Question: Post a question, problem, suggestion (or even a praise!) on our support site, powered by Get Satisfaction.
• Tutorials: View a few short tutorial videos that demonstrate how to use Automatic Organizer.
• Twitter: Follow us on Twitter @OtherInbox
• FAQ: Have questions? We have answers.

Although we have undergone many improvements, we never stop discovering new ways to make Automatic Organizer work better for you. We are continuously rolling out new features with the help of our users. If you have any suggestions, please let us know. Thank you for your support!   

Earlier this year, we launched OtherInbox at SXSW with the ability to integrate with Gmail. Last month, we excitedly presented the Automatic Organizer, an application for Yahoo! Mail.

This week, we're announcing another major addition to our growing list of supported email services: Windows Live Hotmail! Simply point OIB to your Hotmail account and we can go through your inbox and filter the automated messages that don't come from real people. To get started, it's as simple as logging in to Hotmail!

Unlike with Gmail and Yahoo! Mail, OIB connects to Hotmail over Post Office Protocol (or POP). This means OIB can either leave messages in Hotmail's inbox or delete them. In the Gmail and Yahoo! Mail incarnations, we place the organized messages into folders. This way, they're still in your webmail account, just not in the inbox.

To start off, we decided to copy these messages into OtherInbox and leave them in Hotmail, so that no messages would disappear. If you use Hotmail, we would love to know what you think. Should we keep the messages in your inbox so they don't disappear, or should we delete the messages that we recognize?

If you use Hotmail, feel free to sign up for your OtherInbox today! Existing users can point OIB to their Hotmail account as well or read over some frequently asked questions.

During our beta testing period, one of our most requested features was a way to get OIB on the iPhone. As a first step, we created a Mobile Safari optimized website that allows all OIB users to read their messages on their iPhone or iPod Touch. Then, we released an IMAP server for premium users that allows you to add OIB as an additional email account on your iPhone, your Blackberry, or even your desktop computer. We're still thinking about the right way to do a native iPhone app.

Although we've had some bumps and bruises along the way, we recently fixed many of the problems our users reported on our support site and are confident the iPhone web app is working properly. We would love it if you would give it a try and let us know what you think!

Just point mobile Safari to my.otherinbox.com, log in with your OIB credentials, and you're all set. If a message is too large to view, tap the "Open message in new window" link above the message to view it full screen, complete with pinch-zooming and everything!

   

What do you think? How can we make the OIB iPhone web app even better? Would you rather read your OIB messages over IMAP or the web?

Over the last few months, OtherInbox has added several cool features,
and I want to make sure you are getting the most out of it.  Whether
you were one of the first beta testers or have just heard about it, there is probably something that will save you time in one of these videos. Click on the ones that are
applicable to you, or watch them all!  We would appreciate it if you
would share these videos with anyone you know who might need a little
help with email overload.

As always, thank you for your support!

(To view videos full size click on each screencast)

Connect OIB to your Gmail in 3 simple steps!

Connect OIB to your Yahoo! email

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